He smiled, and even with the sunglasses in place, I knew what his eyes would look like with that smile. "Ready?"

I sighed, and held out my arms. "As I'm ever going to be."

"Let's shed the leather jacket first."

I unzipped it, but said, "Let's keep it, I'm a little cold."

His hands slid around my waist. "Is it getting colder outside?"

I shook my head. "Not that kind of cold."

"Oh," he said, and he pulled back his hands, which had been sliding up my back underneath the leather jacket. He went back to my waist and slid his hands underneath the tux jacket, so that only the thin cloth of the dress shirt separated my skin from his.

I shuddered under that touch.

He leaned his mouth in close to my ear, before he'd finished the long, slow slide of his hands that would have pressed our bodies together. "I'll warm you up." His arms pressed me into the curve and swell of his body, but not so tight as to make me uncomfortable in public. Close, but not like we were glued together. But even this close, I could feel the swell of him under the cloth of his pants. The barest brush of touch, which let me know that there was more than one reason he didn't hold me as tight as he could. He was being polite. I wasn't a hundred percent sure whether this politeness was really Micah's idea, or if he'd picked up my discomfort. He was always very, very careful around me. In fact, he mirrored back so exactly what I wanted, what I needed, that it made me wonder if I knew him at all, or if all I saw was what he wanted me to see.

"You're frowning, what's wrong?" He was close enough that just turning his head in against my face allowed him to whisper.

What was I supposed to say? That I suspected him of lying to me, not about anything in particular, but about nearly everything. He was too perfect. Too perfectly what I needed him to be. That had to be an act, right? Nobody was perfectly what you needed them to be, everybody disappointed you in some way, right?

He whispered against my ear, "You're frowning harder. What's wrong?"

I didn't know what to say. Why was I left so often this night with a dozen things to say and nothing I wanted to share out loud? I decided for partial truth, better than a lie, I guess. "I'm wondering when you're going to spoil everything."

He drew away enough to see my face clearly. He let his puzzlement show. "What have I done now?"

I shook my head. "That's the problem, you haven't done anything, nothing wrong anyway."

I looked at him and wanted to see his eyes. I finally reached up and moved his dark glasses just enough to glimpse his chartreuse eyes. But, of course, that was a mistake, because I found myself gazing into those eyes, marveling at how green they looked tonight. I shook my head again. "Damn it."

"What is wrong?" he asked.

"Nothing, and that's what's wrong." Even to me it made no sense, but it was still true. Still how I felt.

He gave me that smile that was part puzzlement, part irony, part self-deprecation, and part something else. Nothing about that smile was happy. He'd come with that smile, and I still didn't understand it, but I knew that he used it less and less, and usually only when I was being silly. Even I knew I was being silly, but I couldn't seem to help it. He was too perfect, so I had to poke at it. Our relationship worked too well, so I had to see if I could break it. Not really break it, but see how far it would bend. I had to test it, because what good was something that couldn't be tested? Oh, hell, that wasn't it. The truth was that if I let myself I could be happy with Micah, and it was beginning to get on my nerves.

I leaned my forehead against his chest. "I'm sorry, Micah, I'm just tired and feeling grumpy."

He walked me a little to one side, off the dance floor, not that we'd been dancing. "What is wrong?"

I tried to think what was wrong. I was taking something out on him, but what? Then, part of it hit me. "It didn't bother me to see the dead woman. I felt nothing."

"You have to divorce yourself from your emotions, or you can't do your job."

I nodded. "Yeah, but once I had to work at it. Now I don't."

He frowned down at me, his eyes still peeking over his partially lowered glasses. "And that bothers you, why?"

"Only sociopaths and crazy people can look at the violently dead and feel absolutely nothing, Micah."

He hugged me to him, suddenly, fiercely, but was careful to keep part of his body away. It was the kind of hug you'd give a friend in need. Maybe a little tighter, a little more intimate, but not much. He always seemed to know just what I needed, just when I needed it. If we weren't in love, then how did he do that? Hell, I'd been in love with people that didn't even come close to meeting this many of my needs.

"You are not a sociopath, Anita. You have given up pieces of yourself so you can do your job. You told me once, it's the price you pay."

I wrapped my arms around him, held him tight, rested my forehead in the bend of his neck, rubbed my face against the incredible smoothness of his skin. "I'm trying not to lose more pieces of myself, but it's like I can't stop. I felt nothing tonight, except guilt that I felt nothing. How crazy is that?"

He kept hugging me. "It's only crazy if you think it's crazy, Anita."

That made me draw back enough to see his face. "What's that mean?"

He touched my face, gently. "It means that if your life works, and you work in it, then it's okay, whatever is happening is okay."

I frowned, then laughed, then frowned again. "I'm not sure a therapist would agree with that."

"All I know is that since I met you, I've felt safer, happier, and better than I have in years."

"You said safer; funny, I'd think that would be how Nathaniel would order it, safer, then happy."

"I may be your Nimir-Raj and a dominant, but, Anita, I spent years at the mercy of Chimera. He was crazy and a sociopath. I've seen the real thing, Anita, and you are neither of those things." He smiled when he said it and gave a little duck of his head, almost like an old gesture that he'd nearly outgrown. It showed his profile for a moment, and because I was in the mood to pick, I asked something I'd been debating on for weeks.

I traced the bridge of his nose. "When I first met you, your nose looked like it had been badly broken. I assumed that meant it had happened when you were human, but your nose is getting straighter, isn't it?"

"Yes," and his voice was soft when he said it. There was no smile now, not even the confusing one. His face had closed down. I'd begun to realize that this was how he looked when he was sad. I'd met Chimera, hell, I'd killed him. He'd been one of the most insane beings I'd ever met. This from a list that included self-deluded would-be gods and millennia -old master vampires, not to mention wereanimals that were both sexual sadists and sexual predators, in the truest sense of the word. So, that I would put Chimera near the top of my crazy-bad-guy list said just how awful he had been. I could not imagine being at his mercy for any length of time. I hadn't enjoyed a few hours. Micah and his pard had been with Chimera for years. I'd avoided this topic, because it was so obviously painful for all of them, but especially for Micah. But tonight, for so many reasons, I needed to know. I needed, almost, to cause him some pain. Ugly, but true.

Sometimes you fight what you are, and sometimes you give in to it. And some nights you just don't want to fight yourself anymore, so you pick someone else to fight.